Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Latest Political News

Your piece, “The Progressive Legacy” is one of the, if not
the, clearest, concise synopsis of how America descended into the sewer
where it now resides. I’m sending it to a number of folks across the US since, in my opinion, it’s vital reading if
any thinking person hopes to understand what has happened to our ConstitutionalRepublic,
especially since Lyndon Johnson began construction of the “ transformation” of America into a
Socialist state. Like you, I’m a grandfather (76) and we’ve lived in two
separate and distinct Americas.
Unfortunately, most of the folks younger than about 45 don’t have a clue as to
what they’ve lost. My personal opinion is that the creation of the nefarious
Department of Education by Jimmy Carter was one of the worst moves made by any
President since Woodrow Wilson. It seems that our wonderful system of public
education has become a mere tool of indoctrination used by corrupt politicians
and leftist, unelected bureaucrats. There is an article written by a Yale
professor that I read from back in about 2008. His premise is that the best
universities in the US
(read Ivy League) have lost their concept that universities “… are designed to
create minds, not careers.” I don’t agree with some of his leftist inclinations
but the core premise of his article is right on the money. It’s also clear that
a majority of university administrators and professors today are the product of
the union and left wing politician influenced Department of Education
controlled (once the envy of the world) US public school system. False
education therefore, with the aim of indoctrination, not education of
analytical minds, is the common denominator problem. --Joe M.

Excerpt: Since 1993 the US has spent $150 billion on
climate change research. That’s $20 million every day. According to economist
Bjorn Lomberg the European Union will pay $250 billion for its current climate
policies each and every year for 87 years. And for almost $20 trillion,
temperatures by the end of the century could be reduced by a negligible 0.05ºC.
Expenditure on R&D in NZ comes to around $10 million per year, with very
little to show for it. To date over 70 climate models have failed in the past
to deliver correct predictions for now, and the elusive “hot spot” that global
warming science a decade ago said would establish CO2 as a culprit is still not
to be found. ... Nothing, it would seem from the NOAA’s announcement that
the 2013 winter was overall the coldest winter in 30 years for the entire
northern hemisphere. Europe had one of the
coldest springs on record. In the USA it has been overall the coolest
summer for more than 30 years, notably in the West, despite some widely
reported intense heat in the east.

Excerpt: In the SouthBay counties, Democratic
registration outnumbers Republican often 2 to 1. If liberals like Barbara
Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi did not represent the Bay Area,
others like them would have to be invented. Yet, most Northern
California liberal politics are abstractions that apparently
provide some sort of psychological compensation for otherwise living lives that
are illiberal to the core. Take K–12 schools. Currently, there is a stampede to
enroll students in upscale private academies — often at $30,000 a year.

Excerpt: There have been many ponderous academic writings
and dour editorials in the mainstream media, lamenting that most people born
poor cannot rise in American society any more. Meanwhile, many poor immigrants
arrive here from various parts of Asia, and
rise on up the ladder anyway. ... Some people try to explain why Asians, and
Asian-Americans, succeed so well in education and in the economy by some
special characteristics that they have. That may be true, but their success may
also be due to what they do not have -- namely "leaders" who tell
them that the deck is so stacked against them that they cannot rise, or at
least not without depending on "leaders."

Excerpt: If Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno were to
receive an order to deploy thousands of troops into a combat situation, he
would be hard-pressed to comply. That’s because the U.S. Army reportedly only
has two combat-ready brigades right now. “Even the ones headed to Afghanistan
are qualified for the trainer and adviser mission, not combat,” Defense News reports.

Excerpt: An interesting facet of foreigners liking or hating
America can be seen in a
poll Gallup has
been conducting since 2007 asking the questions: “Ideally, if you had the
opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would
you prefer to continue living in this country? To which country would you like
to move?” (http://tinyurl.com/6rtwczu) Guess to which country most people would
like to move. If you said “the good ol’ US of A,” go to the head of the class.

Excerpt: Businesses began to slow hiring in September, even
before the fiscal crisis in Washington
sapped Americans’ confidence in the economy, according to data released Tuesday
morning. The long-awaited monthly employment report from the Labor Department
shows the economy added 148,000 jobs in September, well below analysts’
expectations and down from nearly 200,000 jobs the previous month. The
unemployment rate dipped to 7.2 percent. (Sounds like more people again left
the labor force. Obama will eventually get unemployment to zero as everyone
will give up looking. ~Bob)

Excerpt: American women participated in the nation’s labor
force in September at a rate that matched the lowest level in 24 years,
according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same
time, the number of women actually holding jobs declined by 154,000 from August
to September.

Excerpt: The BLS counts a person as participating in the
labor force if they are 16 years or older and either have a job or have
actively sought a job in the last four weeks. A person is not participating in
the labor force if they are 16 or older and have not sought a job in the last
four weeks.

Excerpt: Two influential human rights groups say they have freshly documented dozens
of civilian deaths in U.S.
drone strikes in Pakistan
and Yemen,
contradicting assertions by the Obama administration that such casualties are
rare. (Too bad, but the guilt for these deaths lies with the terrorists, not
the US
or Obama. Just as German and Japanese civilian deaths in WWII were the fault of
those who started the war. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Florida
exemplifies the states' Medicaid spending problem: From 1990 through 2010, Florida's Medicaid
expenditures grew at an annual rate of 10.1 percent. As a result, Medicaid
accounted for 29 percent of state expenditures in 2010. With these growth
rates, the program would have consumed the state's entire budget in less than
30 years. However, in 2005, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) approved a Florida
reform initiative designed to increase beneficiaries' access to care and the
quality of care at no greater cost than traditional Medicaid. The federal
waiver has allowed the state to move about 413,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in
five demonstration counties into health plans run by private providers and
insurers. Instead of paying for each separate service hospitals and doctors
provide to patients (fee-for-service), Medicaid reimburses the health plans in
the five counties for each enrolled beneficiary.

Excerpt: America's
tax system is unfair, distortionary, wasteful and a user's nightmare. Most
important, it's limiting our country's economic potential. But can we have a
far simpler tax system that generates at least as much revenue and is more
progressive, ask John Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for
Policy Analysis, and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a senior fellow at the
National Center for Policy Analysis and a professor of economics at Boston
University. Yes, it's called the Common Sense Tax (CST). It's designed to
be revenue neutral and kick start our ailing economy. It features just two
taxes. One is a payroll tax that taxes all labor earnings at a flat 13 percent
rate. The other is a personal income tax with a 25 percent tax on household
income above $100,000, in the case of married households, and $50,000, in the
case of singles. The CST has no explicit corporate income tax and no explicit
estate and gift tax. But the CST income tax base includes imputed corporate
profits and gifts and inheritances received.

Excerpt: Enrollment in ObamaCare's health insurance
exchanges has proven to be a somewhat difficult process amidst technical
glitches and delays. Aside from the issues associated with actually purchasing
health care, once an individual gets a quote for health insurance on an
exchange, is the premium higher or lower than before, asks Drew Gonshorowski, a
policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Gonshorowski
research finds that for many states, the insurance on health exchanges will
cost more than existing insurance. His study illustrates that the general
experience for individuals shopping on the exchange is that of increasing
premiums from what was available to them prior to implementation of the
exchanges. Many families and individuals will face this reality as they apply
for coverage, and the implications of experiencing sticker shock are important
to consider if enough people choose not to sign up for coverage for various
reasons.

Excerpt: Imagine the scene: President Obama sitting down for
his breakfast enjoying a cup of coffee with MSNBC on the TV in the background.
Just as he’s taking that first sip, he hears his loyal minions at MSNBC begin
tearing apart his administration for their Obamacare failures. What a fun
morning it must have been to be in the White House! The offending show was, of
course, the only one with a semi-consistent token Republican – Morning Joe
with Joe Scarborough.

Excerpt: Obama can lie with the best of them. Check it out:
“Thousands of people are signing up and saving money as we speak.” Yes,
President Obama actually said that yesterday about Obamacare. As we all know,
for the vast majority of people, the opposite is true

O-Care

Not content comparing himself to God, Obama has moved
to likening himself to Steve Jobs, noting that even Apple has occasionally has
problems with product roll outs. Of course, Apple never spent half a billion
confiscated from unwilling investors on something that didn't work. Apple has
never been able to fine people for not buying its duds. After a particularly
bad run in the mid 1980s, Apple fired Steve Jobs. --TH

Excerpt: With its abandoned libraries, boarded-up
neighborhoods, and broken-down factories overrun by weeds, Detroit has long been seen as an extreme (and
extremely photogenic) outlier in American urban decline. Surely no other city
could match its combination of industrial over concentration and municipal
ineptitude. No other once-proud metropolis could so closely resemble the site
of a zombie apocalypse. But when the MotorCity filed for Chapter 9
this July, it was actually behind the curve of civic bankruptcy.

President Obama Fails
To Articulate Solutions For Insurance Exchange Glitches In ACA Speech

Excerpt: Unfortunately for those American’s who are really
interested in signing up on the exchange sites, he glossed over the depth and
breadth of the current troubles, giving a speech that sounded more like a State
of the Union address with small-business examples and reading letters written
to the White House. President Obama also alleged that no one wants to see the
exchange sites improve more than the federal government, noting that, “the
website has been to slow, and people have been getting stuck during the
process.” He also said that it is the mission of the administration to make
them “more better,” with visible cringing from the audience, but claimed
failures were due to response rates.

Excerpt: But you can't help but wonder: Where was all this
frantic effort in the three-and-a-half years from the time Obama signed the
health law to the day the exchanges opened on Oct. 1? Because that might have
helped avoid the unforced error that is raising doubts about the
administration's ability to manage other pieces of the complex law. (Of course they're going to clam up. This
is an administration that got the entire national-security team to go along
with blaming a terror attack on September 11, 2012, on a YouTube video for a
couple of days. They've more or less managed to wait out the IRS scandal, the
NSA scandal, Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice targeting AP reporters
and James Rosen, Attorney General Eric Holder's potential perjury, James
Clapper's potential perjury, and every other scandal that's come down the pike.
--Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt)

Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance
Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes

Excerpt: The main reason insurers offer is that the policies
fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are
ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are
cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions. (The twin
promises, "If you like your plan you can keep your plan; if you like your
doctor, you can keep your doctor" were key to passing this monstrosity. If
Obama had said, "some of you will be forced to give up your current plan
and your current doctor," this thing never would have gotten 200 votes in
the House. -- Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt)

Excerpt: In Congress, the foreign policy debate has moved on
to Iran.
Crisis over? Mr. Obama seems to think so — and so does Bashar al-Assad. ... But
now the arsenal has been traded for a much more tangible benefit: “to remove
the threat of aggression” by the United States. That has allowed the
regime to go back to waging a merciless war against civilians. (Criticizing
Obama? The racists! ~Bob)

Excerpt: "Which forces are taking part? What relation
do these forces have with the Syrian people? Do these forces represent the
Syrian people, or do they represent the states that invented them?" Assad
asked in typically defiant fashion. In the lengthy interview, Assad also said
he was willing to run for re-election in 2014, in remarks that came soon after
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that if he were to win, it would extend Syria's civil war.
(A liberal friend said Obama was on the verge of a diplomatic coups in Syria like JFK and the Cuban Missile
Crisis--where russia got a
strategic advantage forcing us to pull our Missiles out of Turkey. I guess
so. ~Bob)

Excerpt: A suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with
propane tanks at a crowded military checkpoint in central Syria on
Sunday, killing more than 30 people, most of them civilians, in the second such
attack by fighters linked to Al Qaeda in two days. (This is the side Obama is
cheering for, right? ~Bob)

Excerpt: Upon completion of his term in office, President
Obama will bequeath to his successor a world indelibly scarred by the current
crisis in Iran.
For regardless of whether Iran's
nuclear treasures are successfully wrested from the hands of the mullahs, the
current presidents of Iran
and the U.S.
will have left behind -- to the great detriment of the West -- a plausible
roadmap for all aspiring autocrats. This legacy has a simple tenet: Nuclear
weaponry is not a necessity in achieving autocratic success. But the credible
threat of developing such weapons is an invaluable asset -- a purveyor of
leverage well worth the risks, sanctions and pain that are entailed.

Excerpt: A bomb struck a passenger train in southwestern Pakistan
on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding 10, according to police,
in the latest attack to hit the violence-besieged nation.

Excerpt: Oil-rich Brunei will enforce sharia criminal
law next year, the Islamic kingdom's sultan announced on Tuesday, with possible
punishments including stoning to death for adultery and flogging for drinking
alcohol. (Bringing all the multi-cultural benefits of Shari'a: hanging gays,
stoning rape victims for adultery if they don't have four witnesses, executing
those who leave Islam, child marriage...~Bob)

Excerpt: A suspected female suicide bomber has set off
explosives on a bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, killing at least six people. Officials
believe the woman was from Dagestan in the North Caucasus
and was the partner of an Islamist militant.

Excerpt:
To be charitable to [British Prime Minister David] Cameron, he is trying to
point out that very few Muslims want to stare a five-year-old in the eye and
pull the trigger. But, likewise, very few of them want to do anything
serious—in their mosques and madrassahs—about the culture that incubates such
men. The prime minister is betting that all the clever chaps like him can keep
the lid on and hold things to what, at the height of the Northern Irish
"Troubles," cynical British officials privately called "an
acceptable level of violence."

Excerpt:
That makes it difficult to operate with the kind of agility that startup people
are used to, this idea of putting out a simple product and then iterating
rapidly, learning from your customers and scaling up gradually. That’s the
usual model that startups follow. That’s difficult to do in government, and
it’s not what happened with HealthCare.gov, which was meant to start operating
immediately at full scale and with full features.

Rubio:
I'm introducing a bill to delay the individual mandate until the Obamacare
website is fixed: “It’s not fair to punish people for [not?] buying something
that’s not available."

Excerpt:Smart politics.It won’t pass, but then it’s not
really designed to. "He said all he is calling for is a delay on the
requirement until the U.S. General Accounting Office certifies the Web site is
working and has been functioning for six consecutive months.

Excerpt:
One of these nice lovers of children is named Mohammed twice so wecan only be thankful it was a 12-year-oldand not a 6-year-old. "Two men
training at Fort Leonard Wood are in custody after deputies say they tried to
abduct a 12-year-old girl in Pulaski CountyFridayafternoon.
Mohammed Mahmoud Omar Mefleh, 34, and Antoine Clela, 31, were charged with enticement
of a child and harassment."

Excerpt: Reuters reported last week, "Some 30 million
people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual
labour, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude." ... ABC News
reported in July on a National Geographic undercover investigation of sexual slavery
in the U.S.: "When some
people hear about sex trafficking in America
they usually think of Asian and Eastern European women being brought into the
States, but it's actually 10 times more likely for an American girl to be
trafficked inside the U.S.
Further, almost 300,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the
sex industry, according to U.S. Department of State statistics."

Excerpt: : Five days before the launch, the president said
it’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health care plans,
the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak. Who misled him? Who misled
the president on this? Are you telling me five days before that somebody let
the president go out to the American public to give this speech and say this
and make this promise? In fact, the next line is: I promise you, this is a lot
easier, it’s like booking a hotel or plane ticket. Who let him down?"

Excerpt: Now that I’ve warned about the risks of
overstatement, I’m going out on a limb to say that we may
be at the point where France
is taxing itself to the point of economic ruin. One French budget
expert warned that, “the spiraling welfare debt was
particularly abnormal and particularly dangerous” and that “The strategy of
fixing the system by collecting new revenue is reaching its limits.” (The
French--like Americans--are not having babies to support the welfare state.
importing Muslims for your workers has it's own problems and cost. ~Bob)

Excerpt: At an event Monday to boost the Affordable Care Act
after its glitch-rich rollout, President Barack Obama asserted that his
signature health care plan is a hit because "prices have come down."
That's the administration's big lie: that Washington can mandate universal health care
with beefed-up benefits and somehow the plan will save everyone money. (They
are going to provide better benefits, to many more people, at a lower cost and
no addition to the debt. Only a liberal could believe that. ~Bob)

Excerpt: For a guy who claims to
have nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, ImamShaker Elsayed dedicates a surprising volume of hisFacebook page to the Egyptian Islamist group. Elsayed,
head of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va.,
features a picture of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi – the
Brotherhood's candidate in 2011 – across the top of the page.

Excerpt:
Beck made headlines when he took on George Soros.Now he’s taking on a puppetmaster closer to home. I joined
Beck and Frank Gaffney yesterday in the first of a number of shows that Glenn
Beck plans to do on Grover Norquist and his
agenda.

Excerpt: Okay, a couple of years ago you sat on your
collective asses, didn't voice your disapproval for Obamacare, and had the
massive government intervention into your health care decisions taken over by
government bureaucrats. You now have one last chance to snatch back control of
your lives from a corrupted government that issues green checks to buy
political power and caters to the most extreme morally corrupt special interest
groups. Just as we did in 2007 you can overwhelm your Congress with letters,
emails and phone calls voicing your strong opposition to rewarding illegal
invaders with citizenship. Don't think for a minute Congress will not listen to
you. Shout loud enough, write often enough, let them feel the depth of your
anger and you can be damn sure they'll listen.

Excerpt: ObamaCare website glitches prevented anyone from
enrolling Friday. ObamaCare is underwritten by a Treasury seventeen trillion in
debt, overseen by a Surgeon General that's obese and signed into law by a
president who smokes. How could anything go wrong. (Shouldn't it be "who's
obese"? ~Bob)

Excerpt: Not since the Ginsu knife cut through an aluminum
can and still sliced a tomato has America seen a pitch quite like the one President
Obama delivered in the Rose Garden on Monday. ... Talking too long,
yes. And protesting too much. Obama’s pitch sounded a bit desperate and perhaps
it should. The product he rolled out three weeks ago was seriously defective.

Excerpt: Once again, Barack Obama risks looking like a
bystander to his own presidency. Here’s what he did to kick off the week: assemble a crowd in
the Rose Garden to hear him repeat how “frustrated” he was about the many
problems that plagued the launch of the Affordable Care Act’s website, promise
that a “tech surge” was already on its way to set those problems right and
implore people to bear with him until they see what the program can do. Here’s
what he didn’t do: explain why those problems weren’t addressed before the Oct.
1 launch, why he didn’t seem to be aware of them before they went very public,
or who would be suffering the consequences for any of it.

Excerpt: The PA-associated educational youth
magazine Zayzafuna, whose Advisory Board include PA Deputy Minister of
Education Jihad Zakarneh and the Head of the Media Department of the PA
Ministry of Education, Abd Al-Hakim Abu Jamous, published
a list of ten short wisdom sayings that it claimed were said by Hitler. ... Palestinian Media Watch has not found the
quotes attributed to Hitler. Several of them appear with slight variations on
"words of wisdom" websites, and are either anonymous sayings or
attributed to other people.

Excerpt: From 2007 till now the courts have released 1,964
alleged terrorists, says an official government document. More serious still is
the fact that of those released, 722 have rejoined terrorist groups while 1,197
are still actively involved in anti-state activities, according to the official
document available with Dawn.

How Jon Stewart became President Obama’s biggest problem.
By Chris Cillizza

Excerpt: President Obama’s biggest problem when it comes to
selling the American public on the so-far rocky rollout of his health-care law
isn’t John Boehner or Mitch McConnell or even Ted Cruz. It’s Jon Stewart.

Excerpt: The judge will not issue an injunction to stop the
IRS from issuing subsidies, meaning Obamacare can move forward as planned.
However, the lawsuit will also move forward and depending on the outcome, could
limit IRS power to issue Obamacare subsidies.

Excerpt: Police in Bosnia say they have located the
girl that sparked global outrage after a disturbing online video surfaced
showing her throwing live puppies into a raging river.(Let the punishment fit
the crime. ~Bob)

Excerpt: CGI, the Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary built the failed
Obamacare website, was once contracted to build a federal gun registry for the
Canadian government, Breitbart News has learned. CGI's contract was canceled in 2007 after a report by the Auditor General found that the Canadian
Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was "significantly
over budget" and that it had been plagued by delays.

But they'll do a great job running your health care. ~Bob. Excerpt:
The Internal Revenue Service paid out more than $110 billion in tax credits
over the past decade to people who didn't qualify for them, according to a
Treasury report released Tuesday. The Earned Income Tax Credits were intended
for poor working families. In his report, IRS inspector general J. Russell
George said more than one-fifth of all credits paid under the program went to
people who didn't qualify.

Oh, by the way: The
“tech surge” isn’t going to rescue the ObamaCare website

Excerpt: My layman’s sense after reading several articles
about it and chatting with a friend who works in IT is that it’s like bringing
in a bunch of professional writers to rework a 2,000-page first draft of a novel written by a sixth-grader. If you don’t like that
analogy, a health-industry consultant told Politico,
“It’s like you’ve built a single-story house with no basement, and then the
family comes in and says, ‘Oh, we made a mistake, we wanted a multi-story house
with a basement.’ Then you have to strip everything down and start over.” It
can be done, but it ain’t going to be soon. And it ain’t going to be cheap.

Excerpt: According to The Washington Post, the site crashed after a
government simulation that had just a few hundred people trying to log on
simultaneously. That experience was a precursor to what happened in the first
few hours of the Oct. 1 launch: The site locked up after some 2,000 users
attempted to register. ….In addition, people familiar with the roll-out of
the project said, a month before the health insurance exchanges opened, the
government was warned by a testing group made up of insurers that the system
was riddled with problems, including the way the exchange handled enrollment, federal
subsidies, and the security of consumers' personal information.

Excerpt: Taliban extremists have kidnapped more than 100
children from Afghanistan
and Pakistan in the last
year to use for suicide missions against government officials and U.S. troops still fighting in the region, U.S.
and Pakistani sources told TheBlaze.

Excerpt: Twice this year alone, Air Force officers entrusted
with the launch keys to nuclear-tipped missiles have been caught leaving open a
blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from
entering their underground command post, Air Force officials have told The
Associated Press….But officials with direct knowledge of Air Force intercontinental
ballistic missile operations told the AP that such violations have happened,
undetected, many more times than in the cases of the two launch crew commanders
and two deputy commanders who were given administrative punishments this year. (From
AP, Regime mouthpiece, so much be an agenda behind revelations. --Barb)

New poll finds that a
majority of Americans see Obamacare website problems as a sign of problems to
come with law

Excerpt: The American people aren’t buying into the
president’s message that the problems with the healthcare exchange websites
aren’t indicative of larger issues with the law, according to an ABC News - Washington Post study released
Monday. The study found that 56 percent of Americans believe the website
problems are related to bigger ones with the law, while 40 percent view the
website problems as an isolated incident.

Excerpt: Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) called on the Justice
Department (DOJ) Tuesday to investigate an armed raid by
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agents on an Alaskan gold mine that
occurred earlier this year. Vitter, in a letter sent Tuesday to
Attorney General Eric Holder, requested the Justice Department investigate the
EPA raid, which occurred at a gold mine in Chicken, Alaska earlier this year as
part of an investigation into violations of the Clean Water Act.

Feds Paid Prisoners
$1 Million in Disability Payments: Average received $2,322 each

Excerpt: The Social Security Administration (SSA) gave more
than $1 million in improper disability benefits to 440 prisoners, according to
the inspector general. The Inspector General for the SSA (IG) based its report on a sample of 100 beneficiaries, and found that
one-fourth had improperly received disability while they were incarcerated.
“SSA issued improper DI benefit payments to beneficiaries for periods they were
in correctional institutions,” the report said.

Saudi Arabia set for diplomatic shift away from US: Intelligence chief tells diplomats he plans to limit
interaction with US in protest at its policies onSyria,IsraelandIran

one word: Frackin! ~Bob. Excerpt: Saudi Arabia's
intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a "major shift" in
dealings with theUSin
protest at perceived American inaction over the Syria war and its
overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy saidon Tuesday. The
source said that Prince Bandar bin Sultan had told European diplomats thatWashingtonhad failed to act effectively on theSyriacrisis and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, was growing closer toTehranand
had failed to back Saudi support forBahrainwhen it crushed a 2011 anti-government
revolt.

Iran 'Gifts' Russia with Copy of US Drone: Iran says
it has now mass produced the highly advanced US ScanEagle drone it says it
downed last year.

Excerpt: Iran has
presented Russia with
agift of an exact copy of an advanced US spy drone. The UK's Guardian newspaper has reported
the copy of the US ScanEagle drone was given to Russia at
a meeting between the two countries' air forcecommanders earlier this
week in Tehran.
Last month, Iran's Revolutionary Guard unveiled
the "Yasseer" - an
advanced reconnaissance drone - which AFP reported at
the time strongly resembled the US ScanEagle that Iran claimed to have
captured in late 2012.

Excerpt: The reality is that Vermont’s health-care exchange website may
be even a bigger mess than the federal-run HealthCare.Gov. And health care in Vermont may be headed
for a unique train wreck due to its efforts to become the first state in the
country to implement a single payer plan. ... In other words, in Vermont, a good percentage
of its population will have no choice but to buy health insurance through the
state exchange. But despite the urgency of getting the
exchange launch right and the givens that should make it easier rather than
difficult—small state, high rate of literacy, 98 percent English
speaking—Vermont’s website seems as bad or worse than the federal system.

Excerpt: Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General
Eric Holder are being questioned about the Mexican government’s recent decision
to prematurely release Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted in the 1985
kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent
Camarena.